This thesis proposes the exploration of three architectural sources that are narrative in nature: the Renaissance Entry of a Monarch as a public event in the city, the Surrealist novel as a critical medium, and the Teatro del Mondo project by Aldo Rossi for the Venice Biennale of 1979-80, in order to address the making of architecture in the contemporary city. The royal entry and the modern novel are forms that provide for possible interpretation of the city and reflect the difference between the modern and the pre-modern eras. Aldo Rossi's Teatro del Mondo as a work of architecture that was both ephemeral and a place of narrative, was a project that addressed the difficult problems of the architecture of the city. Architecture no longer participates in the realization of ritualistic narrative, as when the festival gave permanence to urban institutions by revealing the order of the Cosmos. However, there remains the necessity for architecture to engage imagination and the narratives implicit in the world